
Jason Vazquez is a staff attorney at the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 2023. His writing on this blog reflects his personal views and should not be attributed to the IBT.
Following two days on strike, its first in nearly five decades, the Columbus Education Association is set to return to the bargaining table with Columbus City Schools this afternoon. Even with the assistance of federal mediators, last week’s marathon negotiating sessions ended absent agreement, and nearly 95 percent of the union’s 4,500 members—including teachers, librarians, nurses, counselors, psychologists, and other educational professionals—rejected the School Board’s final offer on Sunday. The union has demanded better heating and cooling systems, smaller class sizes, more planning time, and an eight percent raise.
In the latest Starbucks news, the firm plans to close two stores at which employees have engaged in protected activity. One is located in Kansas City, where union election results remain pending, and the other in Seattle, which unionized in April. They will become the seventh and eighth Starbucks locations to close following unionization or the filing of a petition with the NLRB. Although the company ostensibly predicated the closures on safety concerns, Starbucks Workers United (SWU) claims that they were impermissibly retaliatory. In other Starbucks updates, employees at a store in Wilmington, North Carolina voted to join SWU yesterday, becoming the company’s 223rd location in the nation to do so.
Amazon will reportedly install new air conditioning equipment in the New Jersey warehouse in which an employee perished during last summer’s Prime Day scramble. The company insists the death was not heat-related, but facility’s internal temperatures reached sweltering highs that day, exceeding ninety degrees. The death tragically underscores that the working conditions existing in Amazon’s warehouses are often highly dangerous, which is to a large extent attributable to the intense productivity quotas to which the company subjects the “industrial athletes” who toil in its facilities.
In the latest organizing news, nearly 200 employees at a GE plant in Auburn, Alabama filed a representation petition with the NLRB on Monday, seeking to join IUE-CWA. Though the road to certification, not to mention securing a collective bargaining agreement, surely remains a long one, the petition signals the possibility that the nationwide organizing momentum may penetrate the historically anti-union southeast.
Daily News & Commentary
Start your day with our roundup of the latest labor developments. See all
February 7
In today’s News and Commentary, the NLRB withdraws its objections to SpaceX’s constitutional challenge, Whole Foods asks the NLRB to set aside a union election in Philadelphia, and the AFL-CIO launches a campaign to push back against Musk. The NLRB filed a letter with the Fifth Circuit indicating it would not address SpaceX’s challenge to […]
February 6
Gwynne Wilcox files lawsuit challenging her removal from the NLRB, and unions file a lawsuit challenging DOJE's request to access Department of Labor information.
February 5
Trump's disagreements with Abruzzo & Wilcox, Dollar General's plan for ICE agents, remote work in federal CBA's.
February 4
In today's news and commentary King Soopers workers announce a strike, Congressman Biggs introduces a bill to abolish OSHA, the UAW announces willingness to support Trump's tariffs, and Yale New Haven Health System faces a wage and hour class action.
February 2
President Trump seeks to nullify recent collective bargaining agreements with federal workers; Trump fired the NLRB’s acting General Counsel; Costco and the Teamsters reach a tentative deal averting a strike; Black History Month began yesterday with the theme African Americans and Labor
January 31
In today’s news and commentary, AFGE and AFSCME sue Trump for an Executive Order stripping protections from government employees, Trump fires members of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and Amazon shutters operations in the entirety of Quebec in response to union successes. On Wednesday, two unions representing government employees–American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and […]